Spice Village
A timeless experience in ecological living, recreated for the modern traveler.
wherever you might be in God's own country, just look high to the east, above and beyond the paddy fields and the palm tops. Pitched and standing like pavilions against the horizon will be rows of faint blue smudges, fading into the sky.
These are the highlands of Kerala, and they are another world.
A few hours inland from the coast are places of cool mists and sun-dappled, silent valleys, home to vast plantations of teak, cardamom, tea, rubber and coffee.
Home also, to an astonishing biodiversity, preserved today in some fine wildlife sanctuaries.
For centuries, tribal cultures built their own unique habitats in these mountains. Empires ebbed and flowed across the plains, but they left the Mannans and the Ooralies untouched. Here continued an ancient wisdom, a way of living that sustained itself from nature, yet respected it and left it uncorrupted.
190 km from Cochin International Airport.
You reach Spice Village after five hours ( six , if you stop to dawdle) driving up through the Periyar pass. Expect exhilarating hairpin bends, vast plantations of Pepper, Cardamom, Coffee, Tea and some spectacular views of mist-laden valleys